


Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes

by MistressAkira



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: 1950's AU, Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - High School, American History, Angst, Crushes, I did a lot of research on this okay, M/M, Period Piece, Period-Typical Homophobia, Queer History, Suggestive Themes, Unrequited Crush, ares is a greaser with a motorcycle, but then a not actually unrequited crush, extremely self indulgent, it's been my secret project for months, its good, modern-ish AU, plz forgive minor historical inaccuracy, seliph plays tennis and is a prep
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2019-06-25 17:01:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15645075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressAkira/pseuds/MistressAkira
Summary: It had been a Friday, the last Friday of March, the 28th.Seliph remembered because it was the night that changed his entire life.----Two boys, one night, an expensive car, and a lifetime of secrets.This adventure was going to be an unforgettable one.





	1. Don't Dwell On It

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the song “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes” by Perry Como. The song was released in 1952, and though the tune and vocals are very jaunty, the lyrics can be quite sad put into different context.
> 
> So uh, this is sort of a special case because this fic is not actually done, but I am posting the first part to see if it can garner enough support to warrant finishing it. Like I really really really want to, and probably will at some point, but there are several other projects I'm working on right now, and I don't want to detract time away from it for a project that isn't as well received. So uh please tell me if you like this, I've been working on the story and research for this fic since April, and it means a lot to me.
> 
> Hope y’all enjoy this random ass idea I had. This has got to be the most self-indulgent thing I’ve ever written.

Ares Agusty transferred to Grannvale high in the February of 1958. It was on the 3rd, a Monday.

Seliph remembered because it was a cold, blue day, everyone still packed into their winter coats and jumpers when he blasted into the school parking lot on his deathly 998cc Vincent Black Shadow motorbike, wearing nothing but a thin leather jacket for cover.

And if that entrance hadn’t gotten mouths gabbing, the face that appeared from under his helmet sure did.

Seliph found they had homeroom together; Ares was already slouched back in a desk by the time he’d arrived. This lucky encounter made for his first good look at the fella, and within the safety of Seliph’s mind, he was allowed to admit to what a nice one it was.

Long, straight nose, high cheekbones, piercing green eyes. Pale, tall, and blond, it didn’t take a brainiac to figure out Ares was bad. His jeans were tight and dark, his jacket’s collar popped, gaze filed to a point and posture impossibly unapproachable. Where other boys wore duck butts or jelly rolls, Ares’ golden blond hair was long, long as a lady’s, and fell past his shoulders. Lotsa greasers kept their hair long on top, but Ares’ hair was just long all over, bangs scruffy, strands coasting just above his ears. Like a curtain of gold, it fluttered when he shifted, when he walked, and Seliph had never seen anything like it, much less on a man so brazen not even to slick it back.

But then again, Ares was clearly no ordinary greaser.

Ares was the guy daughters dated to frost their parents. Ares was the rebel other rebels looked at and wanted to be. Ares was the bullet in the loaded gun their generation pointed at the world.

Ares was as black and dangerous as his Shadow, and attempting to ride either of them for any length of time would’ve probably resulted in a speedy and gory death.

To say Seliph was fascinated by him would have been putting it mildly. To say Seliph had a crush on him wouldn’t have been entirely correct.

Transfers, much less transfer students halfway through the year, just weren’t that common of an occurrence around their parts. Belhall, the city where Grannvale high was located, wasn’t some Nowheresville by any means, but it also wasn’t hopping by any definition either. That had been the primary point of his initial interest in Ares. There just wasn’t a lot that attracted folks there. So, when someone showed up outta the blue, much less someone like him, it garnered a lot of attention.

They weren’t in the south where Jim Crow still reigned, but locked in suburban hell as they _were_ , most of the school’s pop was white, middle-class, and Christian. In fact, there were no colored students at all. And the only not-entirely white kids were Lana and Lester Batou- half Indian they were, their mother an Ally nurse in the war that had met their father while she was stationed in the United Kingdom.

Lana Batou had also been the only girl Seliph had ever dated. They’d known each other since they were small, her father having died in a war they were too young to remember, same as Seliph’s, the tragic connective tissue of a relationship they’d had for so long it was easy to forget there had been a time they’d both had fathers and a time when the finer intricacies of the social norm had mattered more.

They were the generation orphaned by the Axis Powers, called the 'Depression Babies', given the world on a silver platter for the price of their parents' deaths, and even though Lana still had her mom, and Seliph still had Oiphey, being strong together and holding on to what they still had was more important than being upset at what they had lost; there was comfort in knowing someone had suffered the same way you had, and comfort in the truth that their heart was always cognizant to your sorrow.

But that had also been one of the points where their relationship had soured. Seliph and Lana had known each other practically their entire lives, and when they were in the seventh grade, she’d admitted to having feelings for him. And because he’d known her as long as he had, he’d felt plenty comfortable with asking her out. They dated from seventh grade all the way to freshman year when Seliph had the sudden, but not in the least bit startling, realization he didn’t really feel the same way about her as she did him.

Which lent itself to Seliph’s second, less easily admitted interest in Ares.

In the spring of 1952, Seliph had been ten when the Mattachine Society broke national news. The country had been up in arms over a self-admitted homosexual man arrested in court, fighting the entrapment case against him simply because he was not guilty of the charge. As a child, Seliph hadn’t known right from left or up from down, so he’d asked Oiphey what everyone was so upset about.

Oiphey was his elder cousin and his legal guardian, but he didn’t act like a parent. He’d tried, and he’d done his best, but he’d always been more comfortable treating Seliph like a friend than a child. So, he’d answered with honesty befitting him but undoubtedly unfitting to his role when he said, “You know how most fellas like gals, right? Well that fella… likes other fellas. And most folks find that odd. Some even find it unlawful. That’s what this tiff’s about. Some people just not letting other people be.”

And at the time, ten-year-old Seliph had simply latched on to the latter half of that statement, and he thought it was horrible and sad that people couldn’t just be left alone. But then a year later, right after Eisenhower signed the 10450, Oiphey came home grumbling about how three people had been fired from their jobs at the automotive factory where he worked. Bit by bit, Seliph began to see the whole picture, and bit by bit, something within him began to grow fearful.

In sixth grade Seliph asked Lana’s mother, Edain, to cut his hair because a boy in his class had told him he was pretty as a girl. Past the initial rush of pride, that unnamed, unknown entity within Seliph flared up in panic and humiliation, but as Edain snipped away the long blue locks of his youth Oiphey had commented on how much Seliph had always took after his mother in appearance, and he had cried.

Two years later in the eighth, Seliph stopped playing football at school with the other boys. Partially due to the fact he’d been growing up but not out and now resembled a small if not determinedly effeminate giraffe; and partially due to the physical ramifications of such contact- the press of shoulders, the clasp and grab of open hands, the collisions of chests- the odd itch that that followed and the liquid burn that scorched through Seliph’s guts. All of it in no small amount of shame.

Then at the beginning of his freshman year in high school tennis replaced football as Seliph’s sport of choice, and in the winter of 1956, halfway through his ninth-grade year, Seliph ended things with Lana because the fear of what he felt had became the even greater fear of someone finding out. And he couldn’t put Lana in the line of fire if they did.

They’d still remained friends after that and since then, in some wacked out way, Seliph had begun to feel better about himself.

A year and a half for the red-hot realization that Seliph was a fella who liked other fellas to cool had chilled some of his fear of being found out. It wasn’t like it was something he advertised about himself, or something people even looked for. Seliph may have been slender but he was tall, played sports and wore blue and had kept his hair short.

No girl had ever worn his tennis jacket and he’d never gone steady, but he studied for tests and ate junk food and was friends with enough guys _and_ gals to be a regular teenager in every other sense of the word.

But Ares was the determining factor in that Seliph was, in fact, not a normal teenager and that a speedy and gory death in his seat wouldn’t have been the worst way to go.

It was the thing Seliph mused from his seat in homeroom, the one time he could count on seeing Ares every day, the tiny, personal rebellion he got to experience amidst the life of good grades and manners and polite conversation he’d always lived.

He’d always been the good kid, and this infatuation- however ill-fated- with a bad boy who probably didn’t even know he existed was the tiny fracture in the façade. It was Seliph’s secret revolt, and just as he had when he was ten, he still upheld the belief that people should be free to be left alone to do whatever they liked.

Seliph was more than comfortable with himself and his beliefs at this time to look on and revel in the agony that was this mostly-crush. Because, no matter how often he watched him or thought of him or imagined anything about him, in all his fantasies, Seliph was never in them. He never allowed himself to get that far, stopping the daydreams before thoughts of how Ares’ long fingers might feel on his skin or what expression that razor-sharp profile might make if he smiled at him entered them. The hollow of his throat or the breadth of his shoulders, Seliph would admire but never endeavor to touch, arms he didn’t think about holding him, or pushing him down.

Self-destructive this desire was, it would never be a whole crush if Seliph never wished for anything. At least, this was what he had assured himself.

And after all, it wasn’t as if he’d ever meant to talk to him.

* * *

In the week proceeding Ares’ transfer, Seliph had learned several things about him. The first being that he was a year ahead of him, a junior to Seliph’s sophomore. It only made him more attractive, in a demoralizing kind of way.

Secondly, that Ares had a temper that gave even the other greasers jitters, and an attitude to match. On his first day some of the friendlier members of the student council had organized a meet and greet with him, to which he’d responded to with dirty looks and spit on shoes. On Wednesday, he was sent to the principal’s office for not heeding the warnings he’d been given to cut his hair; later that afternoon, some guy called him a bundie and Ares gave him a knuckle sandwich for lunch, which was followed by a prompt return to the office. By Thursday word of this all had circulated, and the word said that Ares Agusty wasn’t to be messed with.

And thirdly, that within the week of his arrival, Ailene Taylor had thoroughly attached herself to Ares’ side.

Lene was the kind of gal other girls avoided. She’d tried out for the cheerleading team last year, back when she still went by her full name, but she wouldn’t hit the bottle and go blond like nearly every other cheer girl, and that’d seemed to be the end of it. None of the preps wanted anything to do with her. In an act of retaliation, she’d from then on made a point of doing whatever she wanted, wearing short tops and high-waisted jeans and putting on makeup in public. She was invulnerable to the smirks and stares of her peers- even as they whispered behind her back- and never once answered to Ailene again.

If Ares was the kind of guy parents didn’t want their daughters dating, Lene was the girl they didn’t want their sons anywhere near.

She did ballet at the same rec center Seliph practiced tennis at on the weekends and had always seemed nice enough whenever they talked, even if she had a tongue sharper than most mountain peaks. But she was always alone, at the rec center, at school, walking home with her dance bag flung over one shoulder and her own jacket thrown over the other because just like no girl had ever worn Seliph’s jacket, Lene had never worn no boy’s jacket either, and she too was completely fine with that.

At least until she met Ares, and seemingly overnight, they’d become inseparable. And Seliph had never seen Lene smile as much as she did around him in the two years he’d known her.

Between Ares’ fury and Lene’s free spirit, they were both outsiders to their kind and fit as natural together as two peas in a pod. Gossip about the two wasn’t hard to come by, everything ranging from necking in the school bathroom to stealing cars to skinny dipping in the college’s pool.

It was all fascinating to hear and disheartening to learn, and Seliph, ever the dutiful martyr, turned each new one over in his mind in homeroom for the twenty minutes he got to spend in the same room as Ares every morning. As with the gossip mill, he never really had the knowledge to say what was true and what wasn’t.

The one and only time Seliph had seen them doing anything tawdry was the day he’d caught them sluffing it out smoking near the gymnasium, Lene sitting on the stairs and Ares leaning against the wall, each of them with their own cigarettes in hand and more than four feet between them. Ares’ shoulders were slack, eyes wandering the ground, looking more relaxed than Seliph had ever seen him before- borderline docile. He had stopped in his tracks once he’d glimpsed them, but the moment Ares started to look up, Seliph had resumed his brisk walk to class.

But for everything they supposedly _did_ do, they never left school together. Every day, Ares boarded his Shadow alone and roared out of the parking lot in the opposite direction Lene walked. No one ever saw her in his jacket either. Seliph was sure not to let that get to him.

Eventually February came to a close and March began, and the elaborateness of the rumors surrounding Ares and Lene’s personal goings-on puttered out in favor of real life. A measly three months stood between now and finals, three months before graduation and prom and the long-awaited summer vacation, and people had better things to do.

Seliph’s mostly-crush was no less unabashed a whole month into its lifespan, but he was as busy as anybody. The tennis season was heating up, with tournaments nearly every weekend and extra practices throughout the week. And between that was shoved projects, the occasional outing with Leif and his friends, and prepping for exams.

Leif, Seliph’s other cousin, was by and large his best friend outside of Lana. Their parents had been close, having both grown up together and been comrades in the war- so close that they met the same end as well. As a result, neither of them had had a well-off home life, Seliph living with Oiphey, who worked long hours overnight at the factory to support them, and Leif living with his sister, Altenna, who was a junior; his legal guardian, Finn, who was a police officer and alternated between never being home and never leaving them be; and Finn’s daughter, Nanna, a first year at their school.

Historically, this time of year had always been difficult for Seliph. Leif was younger by a year but already played football with the big boys at school and would be sitting on a football scholarship by the time he was a senior. Seliph, unwilling to rely on tennis to get him to college, was going to keep his 4.0 GPA if it killed him.

Which it very well might’ve this year. The number of all-nighters he had pulled was quickly about to outnumber the actual hours of sleep Seliph was getting, and that was nothing compared to the hours he was putting down on tennis. When he did sleep, his dreams were filled with topspins and miles of carpeted court.

But every day, regardless of the time he’d slept or perhaps in spite the lack thereof, Seliph steadfastly refused to so much as even lay his head down in class, and every morning, most definitely out of spite, he sat straight up at his desk in homeroom and indulged in his illicit infatuation for the boy who sat two desks ahead and three to the right of him.

Ares was as slothful as the rest of the room first thing in the morning, huddled in his leather jacket rain or shine, tight jeans very well acquainted with the butt of his chair and the curve of his thighs. He often sat slouched back, legs the length of football fields extended before him, blinking sleepily through the first twenty minutes of their day with bleary green eyes and golden eyelashes, habitually tapping out beats to a phantom tune with a pencil, or twirling one between his fingers, displays of deftness completely at odds with the rest of his languidity. And his expression, liquid and open in a way Seliph only saw when he was here.

Once Seliph got past the initial rush he always got simply admiring him, it was then he turned his ponderings to what Ares was thinking about.

 _Did he stay up late studying, worrying about his grades too?_ A flick of his fingers as the pencil went around again. _Did he hang out with other greasers outside of school? Did they steal cars or smoke cigarettes or break into pools together?_

Ares pushed a hand through his bangs; was he thinking about Lene? Perhaps about the last thing they had talked about? _Did they spend hours on the phone talking, meet up after their parents had gone to bed and go joyriding with the hot rodders Ares doubtlessly knew?_

A slow blink, and it felt like Seliph’s heart had been caught within those eyelashes. _Who are you and where are you from and why do I want to know so badly?_

A soft _clack_ resounded in the air when Ares suddenly dropped the pencil, the sound it made landing on his desk deafening to the lurid swirling of Seliph’s thoughts, jarring him out of his musings- and, by the way he jumped when it landed, Ares as well. The pencil continued its hasty escape for the floor by rolling off the desk, clattering a bit louder this time after it’d flung itself headlong into the floor.

It was a sensation that struck Seliph similarly- the dazed sense of lacking control before the sudden plunge and the even more sudden stop- as Ares leaned to the right and reached down to retrieve the escapee. In the minuscule span of time it took for Ares to angle himself in his direction, Seliph only barely escaped making eye contact with him by practically nosediving himself into the sleeve of his sweater.

He feigned a sneeze, keeping his nose pressed to the crook of his elbow far longer than what was probably necessary, but not trusting himself to look up just yet.

In the rational section of his brain he preserved for homework and talking himself off the ledge, Seliph knew this wouldn’t last forever. This pain, this caustic curiosity, it would be gone one day, and like most things that had hurt Seliph over the course of his life, there would be nothing left to show for it, only the things he could remember feeling. Scars invisible to the naked eye, sentiments Seliph could selfishly hoard and examine at his own self-destructive leisure. And that was undoubtably for the best.

For even though the fear of his condition had abated, the fear _for_ anyone finding out never ceased to darken the corners of Seliph’s mind, renewed by Ares' invasion of his life. This rebellion he allowed himself was only to exist there, sequestered away under lock and key, feelings muffled by rationality and stares destined to fall elsewhere lest anyone else glance them.

But just like all the other parts of himself that Seliph had never been able to change, there was always something that kept his gaze coming back to the object of his disastrous affection. Past the looks and the tongues wagging, there was something incredible about him that he was so terribly curious to find out where this handsome stranger that had driven his motorbike into his life and straight through his heart had come from, what life he could have lived that led him to here. And why there was not even a remotely good reason for this ticking timebomb of a crush Seliph had found himself in, no reason Ares’ bad attitude or bruised fists or sharp tongue should even be vaguely appealing, why Seliph had never been able to stop himself from staring.

It felt like a constant game of playing with fire, and though he knew that one day these feelings would cease to exist, for those first twenty minutes of every day, it felt like the very concept of that coming to pass was incredible in its unlikeliness and only theoretical in the same way time travel was- magnificent, useful in theory, and ultimately completely unattainable.

But then the bell would ring, signaling the march to first period- the true start of their day- and the bleary soft Ares that twirled pencils and played with his hair would harden into the alert and straight-backed predator that stalked the halls and had half the school affright. He would stride out of the room like he had better things to do and other places to commit arson- and it would strike Seliph then that this wasn’t the Ares he liked.

This was the Ares that caught his attention, yes, but this wasn’t the Ares of the early morning, or the Ares that made a lonely girl smile, or the Ares who watched the ground when he thought no one was looking because that meant he didn’t need to be on guard for that one moment.

This was the truth to Seliph’s almost-crush. That for as much as he enamored him, there was also a very harsh, very real side of him he didn’t like. And once this Ares had appeared and exited as quickly as he did, Seliph would come to his senses and get up from his desk and leave for first period and be able to focus on grades and tests and tennis and friends, and thoughts of Ares would retire until the next morning when he would slump into his desk and blinked those sunshine gold lashes and twirl that pencil and Seliph would once again find himself drowning in these feelings, clinging to the ship that sunk for the first twenty minutes of every day and miraculously righted itself the moment the bell rung.

This had become Seliph’s normal.

For nearly two months, this was it. And it could have perpetuated to the end of the year and if not the rest of his life because Seliph would have rather died than spoke if it meant changing any of it- if that one night hadn’t happened. The night he’d made the worst mistake of his life, nearly destroyed the future he had worked so hard to attain, and discovered the strength of his own rebellion.

It had been a Friday, the last Friday of March, the 28th.

Seliph remembered because it was the night that changed his entire life.


	2. Hands on the Wheel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Run.” Ares croaked. His voice sounded like it was coming from underwater. He shoved Seliph’s shoulder, nearly pushing him over as he tore by, yelling louder, “RUN!”
> 
> Seliph ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love period pieces, and what’s not to love about the 1950’s?
> 
> Classism, racism, the aftermath of WWII, the persecution of non-heterosexuals, and the fact no one had cellphones, that’s what.
> 
> BTW THANK YOU FOR ALL THE SUPPORT ON THE FIRST PART, THIS MADE ME SO UNSPEAKABLY HAPPY THAT MY DUMB IDEA HAD SO MANY PEOPLE EXCITED. I’M SORRY I NEVER REPLIED TO ANY COMMENTS, I WAS JUST SO BESIDE MYSELF, I’LL BE BETTER THIS TIME.
> 
> Also, because I forgot to include it in the first chapter, here is the link to the encyclopedia of 50’s slang I used here: http://www.citrus.k12.fl.us/staffdev/social%20studies/pdf/slang%20of%20the%201950s.pdf
> 
> Please if you have the time, feel free to tell me how you're enjoying the story, or of there's and criticisms or any discrepancies with historically accuracy or whatever, let me know!!

“Have you forgotten anything?”

Oiphey’s gentle voice prodded Seliph from his haze.

He glanced from the window to his cousin in the driver’s seat beside him. The last vestiges of the fading sunset beyond his profile cast purple-hued shadows about the cabin of Oiphey’s white ’49 Chevy, catching the chrome of the mirror where Oiphey’s eyes found Seliph’s before flicking back to the road.

Seliph blinked away the lights of the passing reflectors and looked down to the long tennis duffel on his lap. Pulling the zipper open, he ran through his checklist as he rummaged through the bag- water bottle, extra socks, his racket, tape, a notebook with the address of the tennis tournament, the dollar and sixty-six cents Seliph had saved to feed himself at some point, and a Detective Comics #253 Leif had lent him last week to read. He hadn’t found the time to read it, but he’d kept it too long already and had resigned himself to returning it to Leif when he saw him tonight.

Already in his tennis uniform and wearing his sweat and wrist bands- all of it coated in a fine dusting of cat hair from Deirdre- a quick shake of his varsity jacket’s pocket yielded the location of his house key, and by all accounts, Seliph had everything he needed for tonight.

Not that this had stopped him from checking twice before they left the house, once in the car, and now once again upon being prompted by Oiphey.

Oiphey too was already dressed for the evening, wearing his beige oil-stained coveralls and heavy black boots, variety of colorful grease rags peeking through the various pockets on his uniform. A beat-up red tin lunchbox (probably filled with the last of the green bean casserole their neighbor’s wife had brought over last week) kicked around Seliph’s feet, the still rolled up and rubber-banded newspaper from this morning shoved through the handle waiting to be read on break. Oiphey always joked that he lived a day behind the rest of the world, as he never got to read about the events of the prior day until it was time to read about the current one.

Seliph glanced at the clock on the dash. The ticking hands read 7:22 pm. The team was set to meet up at 7:30 to bus out around 8. Rather late for a tournament, but the Grannvale team was playing in the last set of the night. Oiphey had offered to drop him off at school, where the team was meeting, on his way into work.

Butterflies raced up Seliph’s throat, thinking about it. Winter conditioning, two whiplash-inducing months of tournaments, and endless hours of training had paid off; the Granvale High boys tennis team had made it to Regionals.

Seliph had had a great season himself, only losing twice over the course of fifteen matches; he was undefeated in doubles, both of his losses having been singles. It was painful to admit he was at his worst when he played solo, but only having himself to blame when he lost was better than letting a teammate down during a double. However, being the youngest player on Varsity- and as only a sophomore- had an intoxicating kind of pride to it, and Seliph had worked to prove every match that he belonged there. The greening bruises on his elbows and thighs attested to that. Coach Fol was as hard as they came, but he’d never pulled punches because Seliph was young, and so though the learning curve was closer to that of a sheer upward vault, Seliph had grown in leaps and bounds since being made Varsity at the beginning of February.

Lewyn Fol was one of the younger members on staff at Granvale High at thirty-four, an acerbic sophomore history teacher by day, the long-suffering yet supportive tennis coach by night. He’d apparently had a promising tennis career when he was younger, but nearly dying in an accident and then unexpectedly having a kid shut the book on that. So now he made a living calling out teenagers on both their backhand serves and their inability to test on anything prior to Elvis Presley. Cedric Fol, his son, was a greaser a year ahead of Seliph and hated his father’s guts. Seliph would have said the feeling was mutual if he hadn’t seen the emptiness in Coach Fol’s eyes after a fight he had inadvertently witnessed one day arriving at practice early.

Seliph glanced back out the window, the suburbs stretching on as far as the eye could see tinted apricot by the last orange rays of sunset. The houses were all painted in the pastel shades of Easter eggs, pretty picket fences separating each neatly manicured lawn where children played with their family dogs and parents drank lemonade on the porch with their neighbors, dressed casually for the coming weekend and pale feet shoeless.

Their own house was in a near identical neighborhood, though the green paint had been chipping for years and their yard, which Seliph cut himself, could never have been described as ‘manicured’- more along the lines of ‘haphazardly hacked into what could be considered tame from a decent distance away if the viewer went by quickly and was also half blind’.

Seliph took one last gander at the idyllic slice of middle-American life outside his window before going back at his bag and began to zip it up. “No, sir. Everything looks about right.”

Though he was a stick about punctuality, Coach Fol was always running late himself. Still, Seliph hoped he wasn’t pushing it rolling up less than ten minutes before the meet up time. Leif was going to be copping a ride to the tournament on the bus too. He didn’t want to leave him standing out there on his own.

 “Got a towel?” Oiphey asked, turning onto the school’s drive.

“Ah! I do not.”

Seliph stuck a hand over to dig behind his seat, rifling through the eclectic miscellaneous of Oiphey’s life behind the seats for the stack of towel he kept back there for work (Seliph swore his cousin could live out of his beloved truck with all the stuff he had shoved in there and wouldn’t suffer in the least). Without any luck, he leaned his whole upper body into the back and scrabbled around in search for a moment longer before Oiphey dipped a hand into the abyss and emerged a moment later with a clean towel, all without taking his eyes off the road.

With one hand he palmed the steering wheel and with the other he handed him the towel, and Seliph’s gaze lingered on the black rimmed nubs of Oiphey’s nails. Years of oil and grime, toiling away in a factory, the near permanent tinge of black that always coated the tips of Oiphey’s scarred fingers.

He worked so hard to provide for them. Seliph couldn’t let him down.

Seliph had two matches ahead of him tonight. Both singles, but if he won them, it would drastically increase his team’s chance to make it to State. And then Nationals, after that. Granvale high had never made it to Nationals. To get that far, even if they eventually lost, would look incredible to colleges. Seliph wouldn’t stake his future on tennis but also wouldn’t begrudge the scholarship it could pave the way to either.

He took the towel gratefully, folding it up and tucking it into his bag. “Thank you.”

Oiphey hummed as he ambled the old truck up to the sidewalk, pulling up to the curb at the drop-off at the front of the school.

“How are you feeling about tonight?” He asked, cutting the engine. This caught Seliph by surprise. He had been expecting a quick hug and goodbye, but by the look on his cousin’s face, Oiphey had something more to say.

“I’m feeling fine. What has you troubled?”

“I just wanted to check that you weren’t getting’ low. It’s been a good season for ya. And I’m still sorry I haven’t made it to a single match yet.”

Seliph nodded, smile reassuring. “You work at night! And I don’t mind. Honestly, for as well as it seems I’ve done this season, I’ve probably done just many silly things on the court too. You didn’t need to see that.” 

“I swear it though, I’ll come watch you at State. And Nationals.” Oiphey ran a hand over his chin, rubbing his mustache in thought. “It’s the uh… least I can do for never being available to chaperone. I can just imagine the things the other parents say about it, and I wanna show them I love my son as much as anyone else.” He turned to look at Seliph, eyes crinkled with sincerity. “I want to show you too, Seliph.”

A lump caught in Seliph’s throat. Though their relationship had always been more casual than regular kids had with their parents, theirs was forged with more blood than most- beyond what they shared in their veins- and this was not the first time Oiphey had referred to him as his son. But the sting of those words never ceased to smarten with sorrow as with equal warmth when he laid their weight upon Seliph’s shoulders like this. Words that Seliph always held close to his chest, even when they reopened old pains; the only scar on Seliph’s life he had never been able to hide, the one everyone saw because they had eyes and could see what he didn’t have. But he had never called Oiphey father, nor would Oiphey have ever let him.

He fought away the lump and swallowed it all then, all the sorrow and shame, and let only the honesty through. “Yes, sir. That'd make me happy.”

Oiphey nodded and smiled at him, broom-like mustache tugging up at the corners. “Ah well… enough of that. You got a bus to catch. And I got bones to grind. You’ll be great tonight. And you and Leif got a ride home, yeah?”

“Yes, sir. Finn will be picking us up after the match. We’ll be getting out after ten probably.” Seliph said, swinging his bag over his shoulder, the tangible weight of his future upon his back. He put a hand to the door. “I’ll see you in the morning then?”

“Sure. We’ll get breakfast to celebrate. My treat.”

“Goodnight, Oiphey.”

“Goodnight, kiddo.”

Seliph opened the passenger door, sending one last smile over his shoulder as he slid out the truck. Stepping up to the sidewalk, he waved as Oiphey drove away, watching the vehicle until it turned off the drive, and was lost to suburbia once again.

Then he was gone.

Seliph took a deep breath and began walking.

The cracks and divots of the concrete gave way to the thick blacktop as he rounded the corner behind the front office and started to make his way to the back of the property, where the gymnasium scraped the edges of the forest line that drove like a spike through Belhall city.

As he walked he watched his lean shadow swim across the pavement and through the scales of the chain-link fence that ran around the perimeter of the school’s grounds, the only noise that of the slapping of shoes and the jingling of zippers. Half-naked trees hung over the fence’s precipice and cast chaotic silhouettes on the ground, thin shadows layered like coffee rings that shifted as Seliph tromped through them.

The trees that speckled campus had barely just begun to bud, their limbs mostly bare save for the fuzzy green bunches of early bloomers. A light breeze blew, ruffling Seliph’s short hair and sending their branches a-shivering, gaunt woody extremities knocking together self-consciously like the elbows and knees of a child having suddenly found themselves gangly after a winter growth spurt.

The newly spring night was brisk on Seliph’s skin, a cold breath that slid down his neck from where it was exposed above the drooping collar of his jacket. He pulled it closer around himself, hands balled deep within the sleeves. The darn thing was massive. Coach Fol had ordered it in the next-to largest size to accommodate for his height, but it hung off his lanky frame like a sheet. Good for curling up in a ball and napping in after a tournament, but horrible at keeping the cold out with the way it drooped and sagged all over the place.

Not that he’d ever get it replaced- as unfortunately sized as it was, he cherished it. It was proof of his hard work, proof of his own success. Seliph just had to hold onto hope beyond reasonable doubt that he’d thicken up to the approximate size of a small shed before graduation. 

From the trees to the buildings that lingered like outcasts along the fence, Seliph’s gaze roamed their windows, dark and shaded like eyes closed. It always felt weird being at school after hours, seeing the buildings that housed and ate and spat out teenagers for seven hours a day dormant, corners empty of truants sneaking out for a smoke, both the faculty and student parking lots largely bare save for one hardcore type or two. Seliph didn’t like it, the hollowness. But Seliph also just didn’t like having to be here longer than he had to. It already felt like his entire life revolved around what he did here and what the people here thought of him; he could never truthfully admit that these things didn’t matter to him, but he could also say that there were things and people he cared about more.

A small grumble intercepted the quiet rhythm of Seliph’s steps, and he couldn’t help looking down as it did. He’d skipped dinner, anxiety having ate his appetite. He’d been planning to eat after the event, when he’d either won and could eat happily or lost and could bury his disappointment in cheeseburgers.

He made it to the end of the fence and rounded the final corner behind the sprawling gymnasium parking lot.

Food really was the least of his worries. Tonight was the 28th, so there were only three days left to study for the mock exam on Monday. He still needed to make flashcards for the arithmetic section. And he was going to go play football with Leif, Ulster, and Lester on Sunday after church, which he was looking forward to even if it would take time away from studying. But Lana wanted to walk to school together Monday morning, so they could quiz each other before the mock, which would help make up for it. Monday afternoon though, Altenna and Seliph were going to run some drills, so Altenna could prep for the upcoming track season. And then Tuesday, Seliph had some library books due…

He cut across the side yard that ran along the parking lot. Dry leaves cracked underfoot, and the sound made Seliph want to crack his neck.

All things considered, he was feeling pretty good about tonight. He didn’t want to lose, but he knew he had put in all the work not to. He’d worked hard, and if he’d lost, he’d just work harder. Seliph would forgive it, he reassured himself. He would just have to work harder. There was nothing wrong with failure as long as he learned from it.

A car honked in the distance. But it wasn’t the only thing Seliph heard. His head whipped around, chasing the sound.

Laughter.

The noise wasn’t totally out of place- he was going to meet his team after all- he was expecting to find a gaggle of laughing and joking teenagers, a few willing (or unwitting) chaperones, and one grumpy coach.

It hit him then, that the relative silence up until now had be unnatural. No gurgle of an idling bus, the hoots and hollers of goofing boys nowhere to be heard.

Seliph froze, stock still right in the middle of the walkway. He’d heard laughter, but it was light- girlish. He craned his head, straining his hearing, searching for anything more-

But then… Thumping. A thin noise that lurked low in the shadows, but Seliph’s ears still caught it.

Seliph looked to the gymnasium, just on the other side of the fence. He was almost there- he just had to finish cutting through, and he would be in the parking lot right outside.

The buildings were all dark, the sky taking on a similar shade, and everything up until just then had been quiet. Unnaturally so. And then the giggling, and now the thumping, a percussive and rhythmic noise that as Seliph strained against the fence recognized as… music? What was going on?

Seliph looked to the parking lot, his vision blocked by the row of low trees that sprang from the interspersed patches of concrete-cradled grass lining the pavement. There was nothing remotely out of place from what he saw- there was just _nothing_.

Seliph swallowed. Dread rose up within him, digging in its teeth and latching on like a tick.

He separated himself from the fence and began to run. Tearing through the yard, he sped out onto black top, hopping down off the curb and not stopping. He kept running, tennis bag a wild thump on his back to merge with the thumping still in the air, converging with Seliph’s heartbeat as he willed his panic down and forced himself to think calmly.

_They were on the other side of the building. They were missing people tonight. Someone was playing a radio. They were here, but something was wrong._

_They were here._

Seliph sprinted up to the spot they always met up at, right outside of the gym, under the huge sycamore tree that blanketed half the sidewalk in leaves in the spring and drowned the entire parking lot in the fall, and they were not here.

Emptiness, bereft of life outside of the trees and grass and birds, and Seliph, was all that was there. The sidewalk was dotted with leaves and clods of spent chewing gum, but was otherwise unadorned, no boys sitting on the curb, no bags piled up or spilling gear, no comics being exchanged, or radios being played. No bus or any other vehicle in sight.

Desperately, he looked left and then right, hoping to catch sight of something he might have missed- anything. There was nothing. Nothing at all.

A ball of ice, cold as the night air, formed in Seliph’s lungs and sunk into his stomach. _Where were they?_ Panic slipped like a frozen knife into his veins, scraping his insides with frost and filling him with sharp thoughts. He was told to meet up with them at 7:30. _What was wrong? What had he done wrong?_

Griping the straps of his bag tightly, he looked around again. He had to get a grip on himself. No matter how hard panic pushed at him, he had to push back. Anxiety could not accost him if he focused.

Over the course of his sixteen years of life, Seliph had practiced the delicate sport of self-reliance a hundred times over tennis. Panic and anxiety had long been his foes, monsters under the bed that could crawl out even in the daytime and strike Seliph senseless in a crowded room, and no one would ever be the wiser so long as he kept their existence to himself. He had to keep them to himself- _lest what would others think?_

This exercise in equilibrium had gotten a lot of practice especially in the past month in a half since the introduction of a certain greaser into his life. If this malignant half-crush that plagued him had done anything even remotely positive, it was that it’d taught Seliph that panic, when dealt with accordingly, could be an armor. Alertness, wariness- worn as protection from your undesirable emotions, it kept you flexible and reinforced patience. Seliph has always been gifted with patience, but only when it didn’t involve himself.

Taking a deep breath, Seliph closed his eyes. The bus could have been parked elsewhere due to any number of reasons. A popped tire, a split drink, something as dire as a breakdown or as mundane as simply being told to park elsewhere. Feasibly, he could just keep walking until he saw someone- outside of the fence, or otherwise.

He exhaled. He opened his eyes and fixated on the towering tree before him. The sturdy thing was already alight with bright green buds, infant leaves teetering frailly by their new stems but holding strong to the wide arms of the sycamore no matter which way the night wind blew them.

Ares’ own green eyes suddenly popped into his head. They’d always seemed dark, wild like the verdant shadows of a forest in the night, though it wasn’t as if Seliph has ever gotten a good look at them. He only ever saw them from behind the shadow of his bangs; and by condition of his continued half-crush, Seliph had never let himself linger on the possibility of getting close enough to judge, nor made no actual efforts to do so in the same effect. But this thought, unbidden in its appearance and distracting in its refusal to excuse itself, actually soothes him, if only slightly.

Ares, and by extension thoughts of him, so rarely provided comfort. Seliph didn’t hate it- and couldn’t deny it anymore, reasonably, or otherwise- but just as panic became his armor, his comfort with thoughts of another boy became the poison that ate at him from within- broke him down and made him want and made him think.

But he still liked to think of him. He really did.

Readjusting his bag, Seliph turned and approached the fence again, walking up to the gate that separated the outside from within. He put his hands to the fence, griping tight through the metallic cold that pierced the folds of his jacket still mummied around his hands. The concrete square that was the gymnasium sat beyond the sidewalk on the other side, and Seliph squinted at it, craning his ears and his head to lay against the bars. The thumping- the _music_ \- it was coming from there. And it was loud.

Adding this new knowledge to his growing assortment of revelations this evening, this one made the least sense to Seliph. All school dances- save for promenade- had been banned. Last year, like a good chunk of the other middle-American high schools, Granvale high had discontinued all of its annual dances- homecoming, winter formal, spring formal, soph hop, and the like- once the riot, fueled by Elvis Presley, Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly took hold and music became the assertion of the oppressed and dancing became the celebration of bodies that Jesus was no longer invited to separate. Prom was only allowed because it wasn’t held on school grounds and had a strict dress code.

Bewildered, Seliph scanned the dips and eves in the building and the shadows they made, looking for anything that might reveal what was going on inside.

But then, another sound split the air-

A curse. Loud enough to be heard over the music.

Seliph’s head snapped around. _A person_!

A person he could talk to- someone who might know what was going on. What they were doing here, or why there were cursing, it was an edge Seliph would walk until he had the ability act otherwise. Pulling free from the chain-link, his mind traced the remnants of the sound down the sidewalk. The voice was muted by distance, but close enough that he could discern exactly what syllables has been used to construct the filthy word.

Without waiting to think about it, he ran. Down the sidewalk, fast as he could but trying to keep his steps light. He’d made it about halfway down when the noise came again, a fierce snarl of words that was accompanied this time by the startling sound of chains.

Jogging around the building in the direction of the noise, something else struck Seliph. Specifically, the lack of something.

Jingling.

There was no jingling.

He stumbled to a stop, and shoved a hand into his jumper pocket, and then the other, searching frantically for what wasn’t there.

His house key. It was gone.

For a moment, Seliph stood there, feeling as empty and cold as his pocket, before he pushed those thoughts way. He could worry about that later- it was of small consequence. He just needed to find someone to help him. And there was the continued noise from just beyond. Seliph was numb but couldn’t stop his feet from continuing in its direction.

The next sound to slice the air was close enough to rattle Seliph’s bones. He peered into a small yard, grass and bushes building up on one another under the coverage of trees. It was dark here, in the shade of the neighboring building in addition to the woody sentinels that lumbered above. He could just make out the shape of a darkly clothed form hunched over in front of a gate, which Seliph recognized as the one that led into the main courtyard by the cafeteria. The figure was fussing loudly and profanely with a set of chains wound around the bars that as he drew closer he saw was sealed with a heavy padlock. They had the lock in a death grip with one hand while the other one attacked the underside aggressively with something.

Seliph’s heart collided with his lungs- someone was trying to break into the school? What could they possibly want? And what would they do if they found Seliph watching them?

With all this these thoughts flying frantically through his head, the idea that he should stop walking towards the unidentified individual never even occurred to him. Seliph didn’t ponder on the stupidity of this until he put his foot down, and the _crack!_ of a broken stick shattered the night.

The form shot up in surprise, teetering into the gate with an even louder crash. It grappled with the gate, trying to find its footing as golden hair hit the sliver of light from the nearby street lamp when it flew with the whirling of his head, and then Seliph locked gazes with the dark green eyes of none other than Ares Agusty.

A white object tumbled from his hair, falling to the sidewalk beside Seliph’s feet and rolling up to his toe. A cigarette.

Seliph stared at the cigarette dumbly. Then he glanced up and stared at Ares.

Ares stared back.

The two stood there, in absolute stillness, staring at each other in a vacuum of space and time that probably couldn’t have accounted for more than a few seconds but felt endless until Seliph’s unhinged jaw found the coherency to utter:

“Uh.”

 “What the hell?” Ares snarled.

Seliph flinched. “W-what are you doing here?” He sputtered, though was still too surprised to tear his eyes from Ares’ dark ones in the low light.

Ares ripped a hand through his hair, waving him off with his other hand as he wheeled around to terrorize the gate again. “Beat it, punk. I’m busy.”

Seliph took a step closer, drawn in like a witness to a car crash, unable to stop himself. “What are you doing? Are you trying to break in?” His voice was cracking.

Ares smashed a fist against the chains again, rattling the chain mightily but otherwise accomplishing nothing. “… Shit. No, I’m going to meet someone, and they said the gate was unlocked- but that’s doesn’t concern you, so _fucking_ _beat it._ ” He finished with a glower and a snapping of teeth.

Embolden by panic, Seliph pushed forward, “I’m stuck out here too. We should help each other instead of fighting.”

The force in his own voice surprised him, but seemingly not as much as it had Ares. In an instant, his irritability was replace by something predatorial, eyes narrowed and jaw set.

Suddenly, it occurred to Seliph just then that he was talking to Ares Agusty. That he was having a conversation with him. _Currently. In progress with._ The boy who he watched every day and just this morning had in homeroom, the boy he’d just been thinking about and all but willed into existence here. The boy he didn’t think about acknowledging his existence only to find himself in this position now. 

Seliph had never even heard his voice before. It was rich and husked, torn by smoke but still smooth with youth. The way it played in Seliph's ears made him think of velvet and switchblades and a full pack of cigarettes. 

And then, the next thought that occurred to him- delayed as most rational thought seemed to be this evening: that Seliph was supremely out of his league here.

What was he doing? _What was he doing?_ He was drowning, suffocating on air because he was speaking with someone he had never allowed himself to dream of talking to. This was all in his head, it was supposed to stay in his head. No one would know, _no one could know_ , this ship would sail on, half-submerged but functional as long as Seliph kept both hands on the wheel.

In an attempt to save himself, contrary to proper protocol, Seliph let go of his tightly held fist and flung an arm out, gesturing around the side yard with a sweep of his giant jacketed sleeve. “I can’t find my team, we were supposed to meet up here at seven-thirty.” He explained. “Have you seen anyone? Or a bus? Or perhaps our coach, Mr. Fol?”

“I haven’t seen no one.” Ares spat, glaring at the gate, looking like he wanted to attack it some more. An item glimmered from the grass, and Seliph saw it to be a small screwdriver- probably his impromptu lockpick. Ares kicked it with a growl, violently launching it into the bushes. “Not anyone… whew, and that’s kinda pissing me off too.”

Seliph watched it go, and once again felt like he too was an item at the mercy of Ares’ discretion; like that headlong pencil off his desk, part of him wanted to hide in the bushes if only to be able to breath against this drowning sensation but another part- the part that played second fiddle to Seliph’s innate desire to avoid conflict but clawed with ferocity into the spotlight when he knew he had to act– was quickly making to smother that one.

_Panic as armor. Patience as will._

Seliph moved closer, closer to the gate and closer to Ares, boldly brushing his shoulder as he put his own hand to their shared enemy. “… Maybe if we try to get the gate open, we can get inside and call someone-“

Ares seemed to start to raise a hand to push him away, but suddenly abandoned the movement halfway through, slapping the fence and causing it to ring painfully loud instead. “We ain’t calling nobody- hey! Don’t you dare-“

“I’m going to miss the most important tournament of my life. I need to get in there-“

“And I’m going to miss toilet papering a sock hop full of preps-“

“Please, let me help!”

“Can it! Someone is going to hear us-“

“HOLD! This is the police!”

They both froze.

But only Seliph recognized the voice.

Finn.

A light pierced the darkness of the yard, the bright stream of a flashlight, cutting through the shadows of the trees but the glow from the nearby street lamp is what caught the badge on the lapel of his shirt.

Tall, lanky frame, ramrod straight posture, a closely cropped head of blue hair. Perfectly starched uniform and tall white boots that no one else born in this century would ever wear, tamping down on the grass.

 _Finn_.

_Why was Finn here?_

“Run.” Ares croaked. His voice sounded like it was coming from underwater. He shoved Seliph’s shoulder, nearly pushing him over as he tore by, yelling louder, “RUN!”

Seliph ran.

For the third time this evening, he gave his body to the action, everything a straight-lined blur of sensation. Light, sound, the collision of feet on pavement, the flashlight’s beam shooting over his head and all around as Finn and the other sets of shoes chased them, the dark shape of Ares cutting through the night ahead of him.

He couldn’t keep track of it all- _Finn, why was Finn here?_ \- and just kept running, the panic that had fortified his armor reliquified and shot back through his veins, boldness torn asunder under the rush until all that remained was the single-minded brazenness of adrenaline.

Weaving through trees and lights and in and out of shadows, movements taken in half-conscious reaction to the dark shape ahead of him, Seliph ran, this haze that consumed him blotting out every finer function and sense. Suddenly, he thought then to try ducking back into the school, to find a place to hide. Or least a place to stop running.

He’d only just begun to turn that way when a hard grip stole him by the shoulder and yanked him the opposite direction.

“Shit! Shit- no, _no_ , THIS way you dummy!”

Ares hauled him back, and then guided him to the right. Tripping over each other’s limbs, they scrambled into a new patch of shade, and Ares let him go suddenly. He threw open the door to a car Seliph had only just noticed lounging in the shadow of a tree, waving wildly with an arm to the gaping black interior.

“In- GET IN!”

Seliph didn’t take time to consider this. He just got in, all but throwing himself into the passenger seat.

Ares ran around and vaulted into the driver’s side, cranking the car to life. Seliph’s blood was pounding in his ears, their heavy breathing a chorus smashed through by the blare of the engine’s roar, the radio blasting rock and roll the instant it caught. Within a moment, Ares was wrenching the car around and gunning it out of the parking lot, the shouts of the police officers on foot behind them drowned out by Buddy Holly and the squeal of tires.

They tore out onto the street, the car going too fast to avoid the rise of the curb. Ares flew right over it, a horrendous scrape sounding from below their feet as the car coasted over the concrete lip. Seliph’s body ricocheted violently in his seat, feeling it all the way to his teeth, remaining attached to this plane of existence only by the grace of his seatbelt.

Ares rolled the wheel sideways, cursing furiously. Freed from the concrete clip, they swerved into the street, veering between lanes as Ares ardently refused to give up speed at the cost of losing this chase. Illuminated by the shaking headlights, Seliph saw the coming fork at the end of the road, the street splitting in two with their current path of travel’s only destination that of the tree line and a chain-link fence.

And then Ares saw it too. His eyes went wide, head sweeping left and right trying to find an out before their speed totaled them. “Oh fuck-“

“Just turn!” Seliph yelped, seizing upon that second part of him rubbed raw throughout this evening, and snatched the wheel, turning it for them.

The car veered sharply to the left, hitting sidewalk and vaulting onto it. Green and black collided, the light from the corner street lamp vivid and wild in Seliph’s eyes as they careened through brushes, rocketing out into the front yard of a house through a barrage of leaves and shrubbery. Amidst the chaos, Ares wrenched the wheel back under his control, angling the car back towards the street as they narrowly missed running down the poor house’s unsuspecting mailbox. The tires found pavement again, barreling back into the street before a side road opened up to their right and Ares was twisting the wheel into a deathly ninety-degree angle. The car turned, tearing down the road and into the trees.

The forest flew by on either side and tangled above them, the moon’s glow spotlighting their getaway through the breaches in their intertwined branches. The radio was still on, a cacophony of brass and strings overlaid by a vehement, _“Go go, go Johnny, go go-“._

Ares ripped one white-knuckled hand from the steering wheel and blindly smacked at it until it shut off.

Then the only noise in the car was that of the engine’s purr and the thrash of Seliph’s hear. No police sirens, nor any other vehicle tailing them.

Ares replaced his hand on the wheel, hunched forward with his eyes glued to the road. Seliph, still lightheaded and stupid with adrenaline, had his eyes glued to Ares’ hands. Every single knuckle on both of Ares’ hands were red and scabby, the color a vicious flush against his pale skin.

Seliph let out the breath he had unknowingly been holding, and when he breathed back in he was assailed by the sudden _presence_ the car demanded of him. He took note of the musk of leather and the richness in the fabric of his seat, everything shiny and sleek and fragrant with pine and gasoline.

Seliph continued to breath it in, coming back to himself and down from the escape, and it was only then when his breathing had decelerated to cruising speed as opposed to that of light that he was able to cough out, "Are they gonna come after us?"

"The heat's not gonna be concerned with chasing us once they find a whole gymnasium of kids listening to rock and roll in their dungarees.” Ares replied, the edges of his husky voice rough with exertion and unease. His grip tightened, long fingers all but balled into fists despite the wheel. “Suppose I shouldn’t be too cocky though. Not many kids driving an Imperial ‘round here, shit.”

Seliph leaned forward to glance at the dashboard, spying the clock- 8:03 pm. And, underneath that, the stamped seal and wings of a logo. _Chrysler_.

Dread like a lead weight dropped him back into his seat. “ _Shit_ \- I mean, shoot, I’m so sorry about your car, I didn’t mean to...”

Ares clenched his jaw but didn’t reply.

Seliph swallowed, the feeling coarse and thick with uncertainty. He willed his mouth to speak again, something, anything responsible, but found only more questions scratching at the back of his throat.

He settled on one of the immediately important ones. "Where are we going?”

Ares rubbed his nose, looking a bit bland though the agitation in the movement was clear. "I don't know. I kinda had my heart set on crashing a sock hop and ruining some preps’ nights tonight, but I guess that’s not gonna be it.” He grumbled. “But it's Friday night, there's gotta be something fun to do 'round here."

“The person you were meeting- what about them?” Seliph asked.

Taking his eyes off the road for the first time since entering the car, Ares glanced over his shoulder, expression coded. For only the briefest moment, Seliph saw guilt shade those dark eyes, but then it was gone and his gaze was back on the road and far away from Seliph. “… She probably saw the pigs coming from a mile away. She’ll take care of herself.”

It was then Seliph realized how truly fast Ares was driving- faster than Seliph was comfortable with, the whole chassis rocking and rattling like a terrified heartbeat, the speedometer climbing higher than he'd ever seen in Oiphey's truck. Riding as hard as they were it would be a miracle if they weren’t laying patches.

Infatuated or not, Seliph didn't trust Ares with his life and trusted the Chrysler with it even less.

"Am I just along for the ride then?" he asked, wariness marking caution in his voice, hand snaking around to hug his tennis bag tighter.

This seemed to amuse Ares. “All these questions, are you writing a book?” He laughed, though it was a noise closer acquainted to that of a snarl. "You some lousy prep?"

His gaze shifted from the road and looked at Seliph for what must have been the first real time, with how far his eyes opened.

"Aw hell, you are, aren't you? How'd I miss something like that?"

Seliph, with his tennis bag and giant varsity jumper, couldn't help but wonder that either.

Ares turned back to the road, wrenching the steering wheel as he went. The ground was flat through the trees, but the road curved luridly like a river through the trunks, signs denoting with arrows the tight turns as they came closer. Ares paid them nor the speed limit any heed as he deftly took their swoops and bends, dead leaves tossed up like somber confetti as they tore through.

“Alright, new plan,” Ares clicked his tongue. “I'm dropping you off at the nearest joint with a telephone and going on my own merry way."

Seliph’s hand clenched around the strap of his bag, and he tried to ignore the vaulting of his heart as it ran hurtles over his ribs. "I don't have anyone I can call. My cousin's at work. He won't get off till tomorrow morning."

Ares grimaced, but didn’t look too concerned. "What about your keepers? Mom or dad gotta line somewhere?"

Seliph swallowed again, throat feeling dry. "I live with my cousin. My parents died in the war."

Ares’ eyes darted to him quickly and then back to the road, but Seliph felt the whole motion like a scrape to his soul.

Ares’ voice got even harder then. "Where's your pad at? I'll just drop you off there."

Seliph's voice grew smaller as his shame grew more complete."... I lost my house key.”

Through the windows, the wind could be heard as it threw itself on either side of the car, panic stricken in an effort to get out of the Chrysler’s way as it barreled through the forest, cold seeping through the glass and right in Seliph’s bones. But there was a silence was resounded in the car completely separate from the noise of the wind or the engine or Seliph’s own heartbeat- the sort of silence that was man-made and created when something had been said that couldn’t really be followed by anything else.

This silence where only small sounds existed, it felt like all the air had been swallowed. A pin’s drop could shake the world. Enola Gay landing on the car would’ve had less of an impact.

But then, loud and irritable- ever the rebel- Ares sighed.

"Damn."

Seliph blinked. His gaze had been stuck on the road, watching the headlights as they ran over the world but seeing none of it, and only had he just realized what he was doing. But somewhere between now and then he had turned and was staring at Ares again.

The cabin was mostly dark, save for the sprinkles of moonlight and the occasional passing street light, but the hard cut of Ares’ jawline could have been discerned from the other side of the planet. It was still clenched, his whole body rife with tension, lean form forced back against his seat like a fist held against the hand that stopped it from knocking the snot out of someone. He looked upset. Frustrated. Seliph wanted to touch his shoulder, to feel the interlocking of his bones and to soothe the stress between them… but that wasn’t appropriate. And it wouldn’t be camaraderie. They weren’t friends.

_They weren’t friends._

Seliph only realized how hard he’d been staring when Ares’ eyes flicked over and met his across the console, sudden and lethal as a viper’s strike. The darkness wrought his high features in fierce newly accented cuts, recasting his golden lashes in shadow-specked bronze that shaded the obsidian depths of his eyes- though rather than fanged with aggression, his gaze suggested… curiosity.

Ares lifted his chin, watching Seliph watching him and asked, "So, cat, what's your collar say?"

Seliph blinked, caught in his stare and with all thought knocked straight from his mind. "Pardon?"

Ares rolled his eyes- catching a sliver of light and nearly seeming… _gold_? - and then the moment was gone, his gaze rolling right back away. "You got a name?"

Seliph miraculously found his tongue, somewhere deep in the back of his throat making friends with his heart that had all but permanently relocated there, and forced it back into place. "Seliph." He finally said.

"Seliph." Ares repeated, seeming to run shape of Seliph's name over his tongue.

“You’re Ares. Ares Agusty.”

“Mmmm.” He hummed grumpily in response. He didn’t ask how Seliph knew his name.

Seliph didn’t know how to respond to that. Or… quite what to say next. There wasn’t any order to this- all of Seliph’s interpersonal skills hinged on manners and proper introductions. He’d just introduced himself to the most infamous greaser at Granvale High- and this had been the _third_ thing he’d done since meeting him for the first time this evening, for goodness sake.

He opened his mouth to find something to say but found instead his well of immediate questions exhausted. There was still so much more he wanted to say and ask- but how does one follow fleeing the cops in a (albeit one-sided) car chase with _Lovely weather we’re having, but additionally, where in the world did you come from and, also, might I climb in your seat and perhaps we could go there?_

Simply thinking such things, Seliph immediately felt guilty. He’d heard boys talking about girls at school like this. It’d made him uncomfortable, and he wondered why anyone would talk about people they liked that way. But now here he was doing all but the same thing, and he was certainly positive no boy wanted another boy even thinking things like that about him. Much less boys you didn’t know but saved their fleeing butt from getting arrested anyway.

The thought rung mightily in his head. Ares had saved both of their bacons, when he could have cut his losses and left Seliph to his fate.

 _Should I apologize again?_ Seliph thought. Or perhaps he should just evacuate, flee this dangerously listing ship, and try to get Ares to take him back to school. Maybe facing Finn wouldn’t be completely terrible- it was Finn after all, his family - but what was Finn even doing there, and, _god_ , what would he even have to say that didn’t ultimately end with _I did something wrong and I don’t even know what it was_? And what if they called Oiphey out from work? Seliph had had to that exactly once, ever, and felt so terrible about it, he’d vowed to never let that happen again. And if they did go back to Finn, what would he say about Ares? He wouldn’t throw him under the bus, even if he was trying to break into the school. He _had_ rescued Seliph.

Seliph hadn’t even thanked him. He’d been so caught up in his thoughts, but now he really needed to say something-

 _Growwwwllllll_.

A grumble- heavy-deep, fierce and menacing, clawed its way into the car, nothing in the air to deafen its roar.

Ares looked at him in surprise. “You hungry?”

Just as there was nothing to hide his stomach’s grumble, Seliph’s short hair was completely useless at hiding his face as it went crimson from ear to ear. “I may have forgotten to eat dinner,” He ducked his head and coughed. He played with his seatbelt, trying to make any sort of noise that would cover up the cries of his treasonous organs. “Haha. Silly me…”

“I could eat.” Ares announced. He had slowed down, and Seliph realized they were at a stoplight, the first one they’d seen all night. Somehow, they had made their way back to the fringes of town. “There a decent dive ‘round here we can hit up?”

Seliph glanced around, the red glow of the light giving everything inside and out the mighty Chrysler a sinister edge, but he spied a street sign and quickly realized where they were. “Yeah. There’s one about ten minutes down the road.”

Ares hummed his assent. The light turned green, and he cranked the car into motion again, splitting off the line quick as a jackrabbit, the metal and chrome groaning like an exhausted runner.

The sudden burst of speed had Seliph griping tight to his seat. “You uh, might wanna slow down though. You’re gonna drive right past it at this rate. And that’s even if the car will make it.”

Ares worked his jaw, the line half annoyed- though there was something almost like appreciation in his voice. “You. You have a mouth on you.”

And just like that, something tripped within Seliph- something dangerously akin pride. His embarrassment and pride fused together, just like when he was in sixth grade- a boy with no business looking pretty, and no business saying these sorts of things, but this time it didn’t make him want to cry. It made him want something far worse.

Certain his inability to reply already spoke loud enough, Seliph immediately turned away and clamped his mouth shut.

He didn’t want to encourage Ares to think of anything else about it- for Seliph’s own sake. 


	3. Poor Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’d all but ruined his whole damn life in one fell swoop. What was he going to do now? What could Seliph even do at this point?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter three! Thanks as always for the support, my dears, and let’s continue! Also, HEY THERE’S GONNA BE MORE CHAPTERS OF THIS SHIT NOW, I DUNNO IF Y’ALL SHOULD BE EXCITED OR AFRAID. 
> 
> Fun 50’s fact of today, there was a lot of songs banned in the 1950’s for seriously no good reason. Half of them weren’t as raunchy as you’d think they were, and basically all of them had social context to contend with. The censorship of the 50’s was truly staggering, I highly recommend looking it up, if only to compare it to today’s standards. XD
> 
> Title taken from the song Poor Boy by Royaltones; an instrumental piece released in the October of 1958 (so, much later than the events of this story XD), Poor Boy entered the Billboard charts in October 1958 and rose to # 17, quite a feat for such a "dirty" instrumental. It’s got a fun, gritty beat, and honestly, I can just hear it playing in the background for some poor sucker on a streak of bad luck.

Seliph’s first day of high school was on September 10th, 1956, though in actuality, his freshman year had begun nearly a week prior.

At student orientation he had gotten a map of the school grounds, toured the campus and buildings, met several of the head staff, and learned where his locker was and how to use it. Additionally, he was given a lock and a code to unlock it.

He spent the whole week leading up to the beginning of school memorizing the code. Every day, he ran the numbers and the motions through his head, when he ate, when he brushed his teeth, right before he slept. It felt very special, very cool and adult to have a space of his own, and the means of which to protect it. He wanted to do it all perfectly the first time.

And come Sunday, September 9th, Seliph finally felt ready. Not just for opening his locker properly, but for all things to come.

On the last day of his last summer vacation before high school, Seliph spent it the same way he’d spent all the others. He woke up late, made Eggos for breakfast- but just the homestyle kind that day, because he was saving the last of his blueberry ones for the first day of school- and went outside to find Ulster and Larcei and Lana on his front porch, where they would decide what to do with their day. Leif would meet up with them, hand-in-hand with Nanna, and Lester would come over later after he got off of work, and then the seven of them would go be teenagers somewhere until the sun went down and they all went home to the people who loved and took care of them though most were not their parents.

However, that night, after everyone had gone home and Oiphey went to work, Seliph sat himself down on the linoleum floor against the wall in the kitchen that their green rotary phone was mounted on, and rather than practice his locker combination like he had every day that week prior, he watched TV.

The TV was across the hall in their living room, but if he craned his neck just so, Seliph could see it just fine from his station below the phone. That night, he watched some new upstart rocker called Elvis Presley make his debut on _The Ed Sullivan Show_ , face going red ear to ear as he watched this boy _shaking his hips_ on national television, grunting and wagging his tongue and belting it out to all the world that they weren’t _“Nuthin’ but a hound dog!”_

And then after he’d watched the interview replay three times (the subsequent showings censoring all of the segments where his full body was seen, only showing the footage of Mr. Presley above waist as he jimmied and jived, but just the memory of those hips awhirl was enough to get Seliph uncomfortably hot) he flipped between _I Love Lucy_ and _The Price is Right_ until September 9th became September 10th, dozing lightly but never allowing himself to fall fully into sleep, thoughts a tangled knot of summer memories and meaningless numbers.

Eventually, Oiphey had come home and was surprised to see Seliph already awake. Seliph didn’t tell him how he’d been up all night; he just made them coffee and blueberry Eggos for breakfast and didn’t think about how the phone never rang once.

Eight o’clock rolled around and Oiphey went to bed. And Seliph went to school.

Only the first flecks of autumn had befallen the town, trees still ardently holding on to their green despite the lime- and lemon-colored leaves now splashed across their branches.

The giant sycamore near the student parking lot, however, had defied the trend and already donned a proud collage of orange and brown. Its leaves swept through the throngs of students making their way to the entrance of the school, and here is where Seliph had stood, in shock, in awe, in exhaustion, feeling sore and new and hopeful for all that was to come. He’d been wearing his favorite scarf, a gargantuan blue river of knitted yarn that had been his father’s that he had to loop around his shoulders five times to get it to sit right on his slight frame. He remembered sweating and attributing it to the weather still being too warm to wear it.

Lana had stood there beside him, all fuzzy orange hair and fluffy cream jumper, hand clasped tightly around his own. Her beautiful brown skin, though flushed by the light chill in the air, nearly matched the leaves of the sycamore tree. For her entire life, her color had made her a pariah. But her kindness was all that ever mattered to Seliph.

He’d clung tightly to his girlfriend’s hand, taking deep breathes and trying to hold in his excitement.

This year would be unlike any before. It was the beginning of the end, the start to the rest of their lives. There was no Leif, no Nanna; they were in their last year of junior high and wouldn’t be joining the rest of them until next year.

 _Next year!_ Seliph’s head had spun just thinking about it already.

Lester said he’d meet up with them in the main courtyard after homeroom. Ulster and Larcei would be joining them there too. Lester had started high school the year before- he was a year older than the rest of them, though he never really acted like it- so he fancied himself the best to give them all the lowdown on everything.

Initially, it had felt a little odd this past summer, hanging out with Lester after he’d left them all behind to start high school. The first time Seliph saw him with his new leather jacket and big belt buckle and slicked back hair, he was afraid his friend had grown up and left them all behind.

But his fears were unfounded. A year away later, and Lester was still the same person; same hard-worker, same show-off, same big brother figure to them all.

He hadn’t changed a bit, when other things had changed so much. Like how even though summer vacation was over, Ced still wasn’t talking to Seliph.

Lana shivered beside Seliph, and it’d drawn him back beneath the sycamore and into his place at her side.

“Are you ready?” he’d asked, squeezing her hand.

“No.” Lana whispered, her voice barely more than a butterfly’s wing beat in the breeze. Then again, Lana always whispered. She’d always been soft-spoken, even though the things she said weren’t always befitting the tone.

She tucked her chin deeper into her sweater, holding tight to Seliph’s arm as she swayed a bit dramatically. “But I don’t think I could take another year of junior high, so it’s not really much of a choice, is it?”

Seliph laughed. “That it true.”

She’d made a noise of assent, and they looked to the school again, faced once more with the task of actually walking in. Students continued to pool around them, trailing in dutifully like ants, moving in lines and groups and clumps, laughing, sighing, yawning, filling the early morning blue with their bustle.

All round them, life and time marched on, but before they could join them in taking their first steps into their new lives, Lana had suddenly crushed herself against Seliph’s side, drawing up onto her tiptoes and throwing her arms around his shoulders

“I love you, Seliph.” She’d whispered into his scarf, her breath buried in the fabric and her eyelashes leaving light kisses on his neck. “Promise me, that whatever happens, it won’t change us. Please?”

For a moment Seliph had been dazed, only half-awake after his moonlight vigil and still somewhat stuck in his thoughts. But with this he came to his senses- _be a good boyfriend-_ turning so he could envelop her in his own arms, pressing her small form to his chest and nesting his face in her curls. “Of course not, Lana… I love you too.”

They’d stood there for several minutes, until the first bell sounded in the distance, warning students to start heading to class.

They broke apart, sharing a sigh between them that melded into a short kiss when Lana tilted her head up and Seliph’s lips met hers on instinct. Seliph felt nothing, as he often did, when they kissed, but didn’t think much of it. At this point in time, he hadn’t really pondered what this (or the way Mr. Presley’s gyrating hips would continue to plague his mind in the coming days) could have meant, only figured he was doing something wrong, but it would get better eventually.

Their lips broke, and with this done and one more shared look between them, they began the march towards everything new; the things they were prepared for, and the things they weren’t.

With one last hand squeeze, Seliph parted from Lana and began the search for his locker.

He’d found it right where he’d left it a week ago. Seliph had reached for the handle on it only to pull and find no release.

He’d stood there, staring at his locker dumbfound for several seconds as the students around him raced off to their homeroom classes, and then the silver lock on the front caught Seliph’s eye and though he racked his brain frantically for the information, he ultimately could only stare at it helplessly as the last bell rang.

He’d been so tired, he had forgotten his locker combination.

\---

Issach’s Diner cut a terrifically pink shape out of the fringed darkness of the surrounding woods, the pine trees crowding in on its sides candy-coated in florescence. Pink and blue bodies could be seen moving around from within, lining the windows in bright red booths, and colorful, chaotic clusters of automobiles trundled in and out of the gravel parking lot, the disorderly cycle of circling for empty spaces punctuated by the occasional blare of a car horn. The restaurant was unsurprisingly packed, as it was the last Friday of the month.

The factory workers got paid today. It was circled in red on their Coke-a-Cola calendar at home- Oiphey too would be picking up his check tonight.

 _Oh, Oiphey…_ Seliph couldn’t help lamenting again as they pulled into the parking lot, the gurgle of gravel under-wheel unsettling his thoughts.

Oiphey had promised him breakfast out tomorrow morning, but how could Seliph even _think_ about pancakes now, stranded without his team nor a clue to what happened, not to mention just almost arrested by his own uncle? And, if that wasn’t crazy enough, had then somehow found his way into the passenger seat of the school’s most notorious rebel’s disparagingly luxurious car?

The disparagingly luxurious car that said rebel was now wedging into a space between two other cars that Seliph was pretty sure wasn’t a parking spot.

Ares had managed (surely by magic trick, or the grace of God) to nose the Chrysler’s girth into the gap between a bright green pickup truck and its neighboring silver Cadillac, right in front of the entrance to Issach’s. With one leg out the car by the time it was fully in park, he was slamming the door and slipping through the treacherously small space between his car and a lawsuit a moment later, loping towards the diner’s entrance in all the time it took Seliph to unbuckle his seatbelt.

Seliph watched Ares walking away, swaying golden hair spun into candy floss by the neon, and he was hit by a sudden punch of vertigo.

What had this night become? What was even _happening_ , at this point?

Seliph blinked, head feeling full and shaken up by all the colors. Ares had reached the door, but didn’t go in, instead looking back over his shoulder at the Chrysler.

When he met Seliph’s eyes through the windshield, he didn’t look bothered. He was just standing by the door, head cocked and hands in his pockets, looking for all the world relaxed and nonchalant like he had nothing better to do.

 _But he does,_ the cruel voice in Seliph’s head reminded him. Ares was at the school tonight for a reason, and he was there with someone. But he’d dropped everything to save Seliph, and then dropped it all _again_ to drive them here so Seliph could eat.

Maybe he was overreacting. He was certainly grateful for everything he’d done, and Seliph still wasn’t over the fact he was having actual conversations with _Ares Agusty;_ but this was dangerous, in more ways than one. He had to watch himself.

Seliph looked down, away from Ares, allowing himself one more moment of panic. Then he opened the door and shimmied out, taking care to be more gentle with both the Chrysler and the adjacent Cadillac than Ares had with the pickup on his side, pausing as he glanced his tennis bag on the passenger side floor.

After a few moments of internal debate, he ultimately thought it better to take it in with him, shouldering it and closing the door. If Ares decided to leave him here, or- _heaven forbid-_ they had to run from the cops again, he’d rather not be stranded without his stuff. He’d need money to pay for his food anyway.

He joined Ares at the entrance, and together they went in, Ares pushing forward and holding the door open long enough only to make sure Seliph caught it with his hands before he caught it with his face.

Inside, Issach’s was as electric and lively as it was out. Families and couples and friends crowded into every open space, over bright white and red tables edged in chromatic trim and perched on turquoise bar stools lining the calico Formica bar top, sipping milkshakes and chatting with the waitresses bustling about in their tidy pink aprons. The stained white and black tiled floor spread out like a coffee-splattered checkerboard beneath their feet, and the cheery pastel walls were largely obscured behind a collage of advertisements and framed photographs, the smiling doctors of Camel ads grinning alongside the happy faces of past diner patrons though there were also a few shots of celebrities like Mr. Presley and Grace Kelly sprinkled about, and even some of President Eisenhower.

Thick was the diner’s air with grease and ash, and for all of Issach’s apparent brightness, a miasma of cigarette smoke still condensed the air, giving the room the grayish haze of a photograph. Ceiling fans whirled on high despite the outside chill, circulating the sludgy air, lightbulbs chattering like teeth in their holders. In a corner, the old and dimming jukebox blasted away, pounding piano keys and trumpets pouring from its speakers mixing with the musical bustle of the dining room.

A pretty hostess, looking no older than Seliph, glanced up from filing her nails as they entered, visibly brightening as she got an eyeful of Ares.

“Why, good evening~” She chirped, a flirty lilt in her voice as she leaned forward on her hostess stand and grinned at the greaser.

Ares, who had been examining the array of eclectic on the walls, barely gave her a cursory glance before turning away with an unamused look. The hostess’s smile faltered, a scowl replacing it once she realized Ares was more interested in the picture of Glenn Ford he was examining than her.

“Two?” She asked, not looking at them again or waiting for a reply before snapping up two menus from the basket by her feet.

Seliph, feeling embarrassed for some reason, coughed out an affirmative, though it didn’t seem anyone was listening. When the hostess popped back up, he offered her a friendly smile, but she just fixed him with a glare in return.

Tucking her nail file behind her ear with a sigh, she grabbed some silverware before sauntering off, heading towards the booths that lined windows. Seliph began to follow, but stumbled when Ares darted by, stalking off in the complete opposite direction the hostess was leading them.

Seliph watched as Ares picked his way deftly around the tables and chairs, side-stepping running kids and speeding servers, making a beeline for the caroling jukebox and immediately setting to fiddling with it. Meanwhile, the hostess had stopped at the fifth booth down the row and thrown down their menus and silverware, proceeding then to walk off without a backward glance.

Seliph glanced between the forms of the retreating hostess and the black-jacketed boy in the corner, struck with the peculiar sense he had just been unceremoniously stranded.

Feeling exasperated and unsure of what else to do, he flung himself down into the left side of the booth, figuring it the best compromise between the raw edges raging against themselves inside him this evening- the part of him that wanted to lay down on the floor and never move again and the part that wanted to sit on the table and scream at the top of his lungs _I Don’t Know What I’m Doing But I Can’t Stop Myself._

And thus, the blisteringly red vinyl squeaked under his weight as he made himself comfortable, setting his bag on the seat beside him and arranging his limbs to better fit within the booth, the cloying smell of glue and fresh upholstery enfolding him in its chemical embrace. Seliph settled one foot on either side of the table base, even going so far as to brazenly rest his elbows on the table, feeling smug for all of two seconds before he caved, removing them self-consciously and folding his hands up in his lap.

A moment later, Ares was sliding in across from him, a wicked smile the likes of arsonists or silverware thieves gracing his lips. The booth jostled as he stretched out his long legs and readjusted, seat wailing a plastic shriek as Ares rose up and leaned over the table, hair skimming the top as he made himself comfortable, and Seliph was suddenly aware of just how close he was.

As he sat back down, Ares’ sneakered foot grazed Seliph’s own under the table the barest bit, the rubbered edges bumping off each other like the roller cars at the carnival.

Seliph sat up straighter in his half of the booth. All they had between them was the table. Though it couldn’t have been wider a distance than the one between their seats in the car, now that Seliph was _facing_ him, he found the shared air betwixt them too alien to breathe. It was too close. _He_ was too close.

But in this distracted state, he then noticed something else. The blast of pianos and trumpets they’d walked into had changed, and playing now was-

 “ _Wham, Bam, Thank You, Ma’am?_ ” Seliph laughed, unable to stop the fit of chuckles that burst from his lungs.

“It was either that, or _Splish Splash_.” Ares grimaced, though he looked pleased with himself. “I was impressed though. Box must be old, they had a buncha banned bops on there.”

Seliph choked on his laughter, covering his mouth with a hand awkwardly as he kept giggling. “Of course, you had to play one!”

“I wanna see ‘em clutch their pearls.” Ares grinned, one hand at his throat, cocking his chin and pulling viciously on an invisible strand of pearls, renewing Seliph’s laughter.

Somehow, the booth seemed to constrict even closer in that moment, and it had Seliph’s cheeks feeling highly flammable again. Ares’ grin was like a gasoline spill. And Seliph was playing in the puddles with a mouthful of lit matches.

He cut himself off abruptly, choking down his laughter. Ares gave him an odd look at the resulting squished-off sound, but Seliph turned away quickly, his eyes finding refuge in the next closest thing- the menu in front of him.

Almost as if to remind him why they were actually here, Seliph’s stomach gurgled loudly again, silencing all his other thoughts.

 _Food. Focus on food._ He told himself, picking up his menu with newfound purpose. There was a strange sound like a bitten-off chuckle from across the booth, but when Seliph looked up Ares had his own nose tucked into his menu, dark eyes focused on the pages and nothing else.

They skimmed quietly in silence for a bit before a waitress stepped up to their booth, another teenage girl no older than Seliph, who he then realized after a moment to be a girl from their school. He didn’t know her name, but he’d had a few classes with her in the past, and he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised to see someone from school here. There were plenty of students with after-school jobs. Seliph had never been able to get one between tennis and his other extracurriculars taking up all his free time.

The waitress too seemed to recognize them, her expression one of blatantly badly-hidden confusion as her eyes flicked back and forth between Seliph and Ares in the booth, face contorted like she was waiting for the punchline. Or for the fire to start.

“You boys ready?” She asked quickly, pen and pad already in-hand, clearly torn between wanting to inquire more about this peculiar predicament and wanting to be as far away from this table as possible.

“Cheeseburger, fries, chocolate malt. Please.” Ares told her easily, folding up his menu and handing it over. Seliph couldn’t tell if he recognized her too. “Thanks.”

Seliph glanced over the menu once more. None of the prices were unreasonable, and it wasn’t like he didn’t have plenty of money. But he didn’t know what else the night had in store for them, and he highly doubted a dollar and sixty-six cents would be sufficient to bail his sorry butt out of jail.

“I’ll just have… a burger, thank you, ma'am.” Seliph eventually said, rubbing his nose.

Ares shot him a look over his hand, raising an eyebrow, as if to say, _Really? That’s all?_

Seliph couldn’t place the look, and couldn’t quite figure out why it unsettled him so, but still he gulped and looked down. He had enough money for a milkshake too. “I-I’ll have a shake too, please, ma'am.” He said, ducking his head and folding up his menu, pushing it away like it was going to bite him.

“Chocolate or vanilla?”

It took Seliph a few seconds to realize she had asked a question, and a few more to process it.

“… Vanilla, ma'am.”

The waitress wrote this down, scooping up Seliph’s menu and forcibly making eye contact once more with him before speed-walking away.

And in that singular moment, Seliph understood everything with absolute clarity. That was his only warning- and there would be gossip about this come Monday.

He stifled a groan as the desire to lay down and let the earth swallow him resurfaced with a vengeance. What a headline in the making this already was- between whatever was going down in the gym, the police getting called, and the edgiest greaser in school mixing it up with the sophomore tennis star in a booth at Issach’s, there would be no shortage of gab for the gossip mill this coming week.  

Seliph appraised the dusty floor beneath the booth. He wouldn’t have to deal with the fallout of that if he just disappeared, right?

 _But then again, that just might make it worse,_ he conceded with a sigh.

Across the table, Ares had this head down, playing with a strand fraying off the left cuff of his leather jacket in complete silence, attention wholly fixated on rolling the string between his fingers and nothing else.

It was then it occurred to Seliph that neither of them had said anything in some time. Or at all, really, since the waitress walked away. They’d been sitting in complete silence. Seliph had been so preoccupied with freaking out internally, he hadn’t been paying any attention to Ares.

Though of course now that he realized that, all of his focus zeroed back in on him.

The red neon from the window sign clung to his black leather form, slick on his angles like an oily sheen, clashing horribly with the cotton-candy backlighting. His scabbed knuckles looked no better painted by cherry neon as they did by lamplight, long fingers pulling agitatedly at his cuff, and Seliph saw that most of them too had little scratches and bruises marking them, even the dark spots of a burn on his palm where he could have imagined him dropping a cigarette in surprise.

Perhaps he’d simply been walking and stumbled. Or maybe he was punched and it fell from his hand. Maybe it was Lene, grabbing his hand and demanding he hold hers in return, heedless of the cigarette burning them both. Maybe they had matching scars.

… Seliph was staring too hard again. But Ares wasn’t doing anything to stop it.

The silence stretched on, the din of the dining room filtering into the booth and taking up all the space. Seliph knew he wasn’t helping it, but… it felt so… _awkward_ now. He’d been so giddy to even be talking with him, but without car chases or grumbling stomachs, what did they really have to talk about?

Still, Seliph had to break the silence somehow. He was going to lose his mind otherwise.

_Just be polite._

Polite. He could do polite.

“Not riding your motorbike tonight?” Seliph asked conversationally.

Ares shook his head, tapping his elegant fingers on his wrist to the beat of the jukebox. A new tune was playing now, something brassy Seliph couldn’t identify.

“No. Mystletainn’s in the shop right now. She’s old, blew a gasket.”

“Oh. Is that bad?”

“Happens on the regular. Like I said, she’s old. She actually used to be my dad’s.” Ares sighed. “I’ll just have to have a sit down with the manual, change some oil, lube- rinse, repeat. Hope for the best. It’s a V-twin, but I think it likes eatin’ my bread more than road though.” Ares rolled his eyes and winced. “The Chrysler ain’t my favorite, but it’s what I got in the meantime. Bout the only thing it’s good for is looking pretty and… leg space.”

Seliph couldn’t quite decide what to make of the odd look that came over Ares’ face as he said that. But he also felt it would only be asking for something he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know, so he found a safer question to query.

“Mystletainn… that’s quite a name. What does it mean?”

“’Demon Sword’. Don’t ask, my dad had a morbid sense of humor.”

“How frightening. It’s fitting!” Seliph laughed. “It’s kinda nice though. You seem a little less scary without that thing.”

Ares scoffed, crinkling his nose despite his savage little grin. “Drop dead twice.”

The next words were out before Seliph could stop them. “What, and look like you?”

Ares snapped his jaw shut- eyes narrowed, smile gone. Seliph’s blood froze momentarily in his veins.

“I don’t know how much I like that mouth on you.” Ares bit out, expression dark. But then he cocked his head, the red and blue shadows in his face shifting, seeming to find this new angle to look at Seliph pleasing. “But you ain’t no regular stuck up prep, I’ll give you that much.”

Seliph released the breath that’d been held captive by Ares’ glare, his chest deflating like a balloon, though his heart continued its frantic assault against his ribs. He was feeling it again. That thing so similar to pride, but the species with sharper claws and sharper consequences. _I don’t know what I’m doing but I can’t stop myself._

Unable to maintain eye contact, he looked down to his hands still folded obediently in his lap, feeling very silly all of a sudden.

Unintentionally, he had found himself relaxing a bit. Away from school and out of the luxurious maw of the Chrysler, Ares had become approachable, personable, his jagged glass angles seemingly softened by the florescent pink and raspberry blue lights of Seliph’s small-town diner. Though clearly still wired up and awake as a pot of coffee, this was the closest to the Ares of the early morning Seliph had ever seen him away from homeroom. He wasn’t some leather-jacketed, wild-haired stranger- he was just any other kid at the diner; this was the Ares he wanted to be near to, the one he longed to know.

It was electrifying, how giddy this made him- but it was also dangerous, and careless of him.

Sitting here also made it harder to rationalize this at all. This Ares he was so enamored with also inhabited the same body as the one who’d just tried to break into the school, fled the cops, recklessly blew the speed limit, played raunchy music, and probably just parked six kinds of illegal. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Seliph knew these were just two sides of the same person- a whole person, who had emotions and thoughts and _a voice,_ but the harsh contrast cut such a glaring difference it was hard to relegate how Seliph should feel about any of these things.

Though, behind all of that, rational thought reminded him that he had to be careful feeling _any_ of these things _at all._ This whole-hearted, half-crush was all he could manage. Anything more would be disastrous- getting caught at school after hours would certainly be the least of his problems then.

Spotting the approaching form of their waitress, Seliph put a pin in his inner turmoil, perking up seeing the tray she bared packed with food. Thick burgers dripping grease and salt and stacked up with vegetables and cheese sat atop brightly colored ceramic plates, which she parked in front of them alongside their milkshakes, Ares’ frothy with malt and Seliph’s thick with cream.

She then settled a plate of still-sizzling fries between them, lastly dropping a slip of paper Seliph assumed to be the check on the end. It didn’t appear to have been split up, with both of their meals put together, but before he could say anything, she was walking away again, clearly having decided they weren’t worth the drama. Seliph didn’t blame her.

But then the _smell_ hit him, too intoxicating to ignore, fresh and hot and _just waiting_ to be devoured, and even with all of Seliph’s impending dread, he knew that if he didn’t get this burger in his face promptly, he was going to end up wearing most of it when he just skipped the part with hands and went straight plate-to-mouth.

He’d planned on eating after the tennis tournament, thinking he would have either won and celebrated by stuffing his face with his team, or lost knowing he had the solace of cheeseburgers to bury his shame in, but he supposed he was skipping the middle part here too with tournament, or the lack thereof. _Best to leave it with that one,_ he consoled himself, lifting his burger and taking a bite. _I still got the shame and the cheeseburgers in the end, anyways._

For a while, both boys ate in contented silence, awkwardness and the crunching of lettuce the loudest things between them, broken up only by an occasional grunt or the wheeze of the ketchup bottle. He was certain their circumstances were interfering with his judgement, but this burger was definitely the best thing Seliph had ever eaten, and he might’ve been willing to give up his firstborn child to it if it asked. _Might’ve._

“You’re looking happier.”

Seliph looked up. Ares had one elbow on the table, leaning into it as he studied Seliph, a flicker of amusement in his eyes.

“Hmm? Oh. Yes.” Seliph said after a moment, setting down his burger. He’d gotten a little over-zealous with his meal, suddenly feeling self-conscious of the slickness of grease on his chin, and reached for his napkin, burying the lower half of his face in it. “What about you? Better?”

“Yeah.” Ares picked up a fry, playing it at the corner of his mouth thoughtfully before sighing and taking a bite. “No use being salty. I’d rather not tangle with the man anyway.”

“What exactly was going on tonight?”

Still chewing, Ares shrugged out of his jacket, baring a shirt so white underneath it looked like it’d never been worn before. He reached for the little bundle rolled up in the end of his sleeve, pulling free from it a pack of Lucky Strikes, which he then popped open and took a cigarette and his lighter from.

“There was a bop goin’ on. Bunch of kids were talking about setting up this secret sock hop tonight, and me and her were gonna crash it. She got there early to stake it out while I dealt with my keeper. I was a bit late because he wanted to chew my ear off for a while, and we got into it…”

He trailed off and blinked, his brow furrowing. “Why am I telling you all of this? Anyways, I got there later than I wanted to… got locked out, met your skinny ass, wound up here.”

He flicked his zippo, lighting up right there over his fries. Seliph’s nose crinkled. Ares pocketed his lighter, taking a drag before pulling the cigarette from his lips and blowing smoke through his nose. “She’s probably simmering something fierce right now.”

Seliph waved away the smoke with a hand before recollecting his burger with both and making to take a smaller, less gorging bite. “She’s Lene, right? Ailene Taylor.”

Ares eyes snapped to his so suddenly, it stilled Seliph mid-bite. He took another deep drag off his weed, eyes glinting dangerously over his hand, the switchblade edge of his voice primed and sharp. “You gonna rat on her?”

“Never!” Seliph asserted, voice pitching high. “I know her. We go to the same rec center. I like her. And I’ve just seen you two around. She’s… never had many friends, and I’ve seen how happy you make her.”

Seliph stopped then, his thoughts only just then catching up with his mouth. He’d become so defensive- how close had he veered to having to explain himself? And what was there even to explain that didn’t eventually come back to one hard truth? Sitting up, Seliph schooled his expression, set down his burger, and cleared his throat. “Are you worried about her?”

“She can take care of herself.” Ares said, though the same unreadable expression he’d had back in the car when he’d turned to look behind at all the road he’d put between himself and her scored his features again. “… She probably doesn’t even want to see me right now, anyways. I blew it.”

Ares took another heavy drag off his rag, hunched over, chin firmly in the palm of his hand, brow furrowed and eyes cut low. If Seliph hadn’t known any better, he would have said he looked to be… pouting.

Ares took a deep breath and let it out in a sharp, smoky exhale. Then he sat up. “And you?” He asked, collecting a brick pink ashtray from its place beside the napkin holder and setting it by his milkshake, resting the cigarette on the rim of it. Hands freed, he lifted his burger again, making to take a bite. “You were blabbering about your tennis team. What was that about?”

Seliph looked down at his hands, rubbing the callouses between his greasy fingers. “We have a tournament tonight. We were supposed to meet up in front of the gymnasium and take a bus to the place. I… don’t know what happened. We were meeting up at 7:30, but when I got there, no one was there. I looked around for a while, but all I found was you…” Ares nodded, chewing thoughtfully. Seliph shook his head. “I don’t know what happened.”

Ares swallowed, and rested his chin in the hand not holding his burger. “Got the address?”

“Hmm?”

Ares pulled an errant sprig of lettuce from beneath his burger, chewing on it as he met Seliph’s eyes. “The place you and your merry band of nosebleeds were heading. The place the thing is going down at.”

Realization shot through Seliph, jolting him up in his seat. “The tournament! I have the address written down in my bag!”

He turned to the bag on the seat beside him, frantically tearing open the zipper and proceeding to all but spelunk into its depths. Ares jumped as the ferocity of Seliph’s search rocked the table, eyes going wide with surprise for a moment before he seemed to remember himself, hunching back over and grimacing like a surly old man on his porch.

“I’ll take you there- hey, after, _AFTER_ you finish your fucking food, god.” He growled, throwing down his burger and folding his arms grumpily across the tabletop.

Seliph started piling things on the table when just moving things around proved to be ineffective, tennis racket and tape tossed haphazardly into the fries, comic book and water bottle joining the fray, causing Ares to flinch back again, and still Seliph scavenged deeper. With a disgruntled look, Ares pushed the plate with his burger on it away altogether, retrieving his cigarette and hammering away on it, watching the bustle of the rest of the diner as the cyclone that was Seliph continued tearing his bag apart, looking for that notebook he _knew_ he had put in here earlier.

And then his hand touched it- the cold metal coils of the green spiral bound notebook he used for English Lit.

He ripped it out, and immediately began leafing through it, searching for the page with the tournament’s address written on it. He passed through pages of equations and fractions, a handful of sheets with vocabulary written on them, but mostly more equations. _Why was I using my literature notebook for math?_ Had he been grabbing the one wrong for class… for the last two weeks?

He flipped to the next page, and then stopped.

The page here was torn in half, only the upper portion of it still attached to the spiral binding. There were only six short lines written on the page, written in a curly hand with pink ink, and they were not an address:

_Let’s just walk to school together on Monday! That way we can study, and we won’t be bothered._

_I’ll come to your house at 7:30. That should give us plenty of time to be at school by 8. I won’t be able to come over earlier though, so you gotta be awake when I get there! Your sleep is important to me, but finals are important too, okay!!_

_Love,_

_Lana_

Seliph could pinpoint the exact moment his heart shut down. Right over the numbers 7:30. And again over the number 8.

He’d grabbed the wrong notebook alright.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ares watching him from the corner of his own, but upon seeing the shell-shocked expression on Seliph’s face, the greaser turned to face him directly. “What? What is it?”

Seliph tore the scrap of paper out of his notebook, hoping in vain that upon closer inspection, he’d realize he’d simply read it wrong. He hadn’t. “This… isn’t it.”

Ares cocked an eyebrow at him. “Come again?”

Seliph swallowed the hard lump in his throat, his next words more falling out of his mouth than being spoken. “It’s… not the address. It’s not even about the tennis tournament. It’s just a note my friend wrote me… I grabbed the wrong notebook. I got it confused with the note she wrote me.”

Ares’s long fingers reached out and plucked the note deftly from Seliph’s hand. His limp grip relinquished it easily. Ares set aside his cigarette, and scanned the note, eyes darting back and forth as he read the six short sentences that might have just damned Seliph’s life altogether.

When he was done, Ares picked up his rag again, taking a deep drag and holding the paper up to avoid getting ashes on it. With an inscrutable expression, he handed it back to Seliph. “… She your girl?”

It took Seliph a moment to catch on to that Ares was saying. He was referring to Lana.

“No.” Seliph said. Then he clarified, “Not anymore. We broke up last year.”

Ares scratched a spot on the table, tipping the hand with his cigarette in the direction of the note. “I think she still wants to be. Your girl.” Then he shrugged. “I don’t know her, but that’s what it seems like to me.”

Seliph wasn’t sure where this line of questioning was coming from, but his thoughts were hurtling too fast to even process that right now. It felt like the room was spinning. Or like all of his internal organs were about to hit the eject button.

“She’s just my best friend. We grew up together.” He buried his face in his hands. “She lost her father too. Good lord, she’s gonna be so mad at me after this.”

Ares took one last puff from his cigarette, stabbing out the butt in the ashtray and blowing out the smoke. “Nothing you can do about it right now. I’d tell you not to worry about it, but you seem like the type to anyways, so I’ll just say that it coulda been worse. Think about the good in that.”

But despite his blithe advice, Ares still looked a bit irritated as he ran a hand through his hair, clearing his bangs from his eyes and flopping them over the other side of his face, the golden strands catching the neon and holding it against his sharp features like a caress. “I am sorry I couldn’t be of any more help, though. I really am.”

With his bangs shifted aside, all his hard angles were on display, and it was the most Seliph had ever seen of his face. Ares’ expression, too, seemed bewildering bare. Seliph still couldn’t tell what color his eyes were, separated from the shadow of his bangs but still cloaked in the color of neon, but they were not as dark as he initially thought they were. They held the light brilliantly, though the name of the feeling within them was Seliph’s best guess.

 _Stop thinking about this._ Seliph’s thoughts snapped at him. _You have more important things to worry about._

And that was true, because he _did._

God, what had he done? _What had he done?_

Seliph felt like he’d been physically tipped over. Overloaded, a scale fallen out of balance, or a shelf, everything stacked too high, too fast, too much and he was toppling over. Everything falling to the floor. Gravity’s appetite consuming everything he held dear.

He’d missed the bus because he’d confused the times with his meeting with Lana Monday morning. How hadn’t he noticed that? And how had he grabbed the wrong notebook? Where had his head been? What was he _doing_?

Missing tonight’s tournament would result in an automatic forfeiting of his matches if they found no one to cover them- and it could spell certain disaster for his team and their chance at nationals. No nationals meant no scholarship. 

Looking over the strewn about contents of his disemboweled tennis bag, Seliph caught sight of the fluffy white towel sticking out from the opening, and he suddenly knew too what had happened to his house key. It’d probably fallen out of his pocket when he leaned over the seat in Oiphey’s truck to look for the towels, its fall and landing muffled by all the stuff Oiphey kept piled up back there. Another careless failure he could have prevented by _paying attention._

But then running into Ares had been a blessing, even if sequentially running into the cops was not. He’d presented a chance to get this night back on track, but then Seliph had to blow that too by grabbing the wrong notebook.

He knew he hadn’t been sleeping well for some months now, but was he really so far gone that even his future had become collateral? Because he’d all but ruined his whole damn life in one fell swoop. What was he going to do now? What could he even do at this point?

As strong as the desire was, curling up in a ball was out of the question. It would help no one in this scenario. But there was no one he could really call right now, either. Everyone was either at work or already there at the tournament. Seliph didn’t even know the name of the place, much less the phone number. So that was a no-go, too.

Seliph’s eyes fixed on his bruised knees under the table, still spread with his feet on either side of the base. The sickly greening yellow color of the oldest ones didn’t look quite as disgusting under the red neon, but they were still painful where Seliph had knocked them against things. Each one was a lesson. In patience, in skill, in failure.

Ares had shifted at some point during the meal, his own long legs spread out and now bracketing Seliph’s on either side. He could feel the warmth of his legs through his jeans, even though they weren’t even touching. He was still too close, but Seliph didn’t want him to go away.

This realization sent Seliph’s thoughts scattering. More than anything, he didn’t want to pull away, like he should, like he’d been coaching himself to do all this time. He wanted this more than he'd wanted his burger, more than he wanted Coach Fol’s approval. More than he wanted this tournament.

Ares had been holding him together through this, and he was still doing it now, just by being close. Even if he hadn’t realized his effect on him, it had already been done. Seliph had unintentionally been relying on him all night, and he couldn’t just fall apart on Ares now. He just couldn’t do that.

But what was he doing to do?

What _could_ he do?

Seliph sat up abruptly with a sigh. He was getting stuck in his head again. He couldn’t do that… not here, not with Ares. He was only going to keep spiraling if he did- and then what use would he be?

_Panic as armor. Patience as will._

“You know, you’re right, what can I really do about it now?” Seliph shook his head free of these thoughts, surrendering a small smile as he accepted his defeat. “I should focus on the things I can actually control, not the things I wish I did.”

“Mmmm.” Ares hummed, tapping his fingers on his forehead where his hand still rested. Then he was removing it, his bangs falling back into place as he threaded in fingers together and rested his elbows on the table. Underneath, his knees folded together, knocking into Seliph’s as if the bones were sizing each other up.

“So, what _can_ you do? You’re oh for two here, Seliph.” He lifted his chin, eyeing him mischievously. “What’s next for us?”

Seliph’s head snapped up, the word _us_ pinging around in his head like pinball. “What are you going to do, Ares? Your plans sort of got bent too.”

Ares shrugged. “Like I said, it’s Friday night. There’s bound to be something around here to do. And there ain’t no one else looking for me tonight. ‘Sides the heat. But it’ll be fine. It’s not our first tango.” He unclasped his hands, and laid one out, like he was giving a presentation. “I’ll just avoid the main drag tonight, _try_ not to speed, and call Lene in the morning to see if she still hates my guts. We’ll go from there.”

Seliph shook his head, chuckling softly. “I doubt she will.”

An odd look crossed Ares’ face, something at the cross of amused and another emotion Seliph couldn’t entirely identify, but then he sighed, a small wry smile fighting its way onto his lips.

Edging himself out of the seat, he stood up and slung his leather jacket over one shoulder, angling his body half-away, carelessly casual. When he turned to look down at Seliph still sitting in the booth, he met his gaze fully and fearlessly.

“You wanna take a ride with me?” Ares asked, that little smile still gracing his thin lips. “If you ain’t got nothing better to do. Or someplace else you wanna go.”

Before Seliph could processed his offer, Ares was scooping up the check, a black leather wallet appearing in his hand which he used to gesture to the cash register at the bar with. “Think about it. I’ll be right back.”

Ares turned and headed off, leaving Seliph to stare at his back as his thoughts scrambled to resemble themselves into working fashion.

Ares… had invited him to hang out. With him. Together.

Excitement bubbled up inside him, taking up all the space in his lungs. This was… unexpected. Every weekday the past two months, Seliph had stared at this boy in homeroom, and never a single one of those days would he have ever even considered the possibility of Ares Agusty wanting to take a ride with him. In his _car._ His disparagingly luxurious car that Seliph had almost crashed into a mailbox and definitely mowed down a few poor shrubs with, but that appeared to not have been a deal breaker.

 _Is he just taking pity on me?_ Seliph’s next thoughts pondered, and though there was no evidence to the contrary, he somehow got the feeling this wasn’t the case.

Seliph didn’t know Ares well- or at all, really- but with everything he’d done this evening, Seliph wouldn’t have pinned Ares to be the giving type. He didn’t just do anything for anyone. He certainly didn’t do that at school- and Lene was the only person Seliph had ever seen Ares give any time of the day to. He'd even blown off the cute hostess girl without batting an eye.

But he had rescued Seliph tonight. Drove them here to eat. Reassured him. Watching as Ares handed their ticket and two dollars over to the cashier, Seliph’s heart kicked up a beat as he waved away the change when she offered it to him. _Paid for his meal._

Ares had gone out of his way to help him at every turn, when it would have been easier to ditch him and move on with his life. He might not have been a good person, but he was an undoubtedly kind one.

Seliph felt lighter than he had all evening- all week even, all month. He’d been barricading himself off from his feelings all night, but maybe that had been the wrong thing to do.

He was no stranger to unrequited feelings, but there was something undeniable about the way that Ares made him feel in turn- braver, bolder, like he wasn’t just a good kid doing good things because it was what was expected of him. That he could grab the steering wheel in a speeding car, and run from cops. That he could put his elbows on the table and even if he didn’t yell it out loud, he could scream he didn’t have a clue what he was doing but that he would do it anyway.

That this secret, this little rebellion that he cherished, could do more good than harm. Could do more than make Seliph miserable with want and anxiety. In contrast, these feelings made him feel new, green like spring leaves, the way they burst out of his chest in a way entirely unintentional but at the same time a natural product of their originator.

They weren’t friends, but people were going to talk about this anyways, come Monday. Seliph had always been a friendly and sociable person, and if there was anything he could say he had excelled at since entering high school, it would have been all the friends he’d made. He could make a small army of them all now, people of all kinds, across grades, across interests. Would it have been so far-fetched to believe he could have added this greaser to the ranks too? That they could have struck up something together and found they enjoyed the other’s company?

Because Seliph wanted that. And it was possible Seliph could actually _have_ that. Before, it felt like reaching for the sun, knowing he was going to burn to a crisp before he even got close. But he still wanted to know more about this boy, this wild-haired stranger who confused and startled and enchanted him, and if he could have this, Seliph was sure he wouldn’t need anything else from him.

They were not friends, but why couldn’t they be?

“So? Made up your mind?”

Seliph looked up and saw Ares had returned, eyebrow raised and a fresh cigarette between his fingers. He was ready for an answer. Seliph was ready to give him his.

“…I think I’d rather go with you. I don’t really want to sit on my front porch until 5am- that is unless the neighbors call the police on me sooner.” Seliph collected his possessions and zipped but his tennis bag, rising to stand beside Ares. “And… the company would be nice, too, I think.”

“Righty-o.” Ares replied mildly before wedging the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, that wicked grin of his back in place. “I’m thinking bowling.”

Seliph smiled. “Then let’s go bowling.”

Ares jangled his keys. “To bowling we go.”

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT 9/12/18: LOOK AT Y'ALL GO I'M SO HAPPY Y'ALL ARE SO EXCITED, THIS STORY WILL BE CONTINUED AND WILL UPDATE AGAIN SOON! THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT!! 
> 
> P.S. Stayed tuned to my Tumblr @mistressakiraart for sneak peaks and updates!


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